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RH YM ES OF 
A ROUNDER 



By 
TOM M c I N N E S 



Author of 
IN AMBER LANDS 



With cover design by 

"PAL" 




BROADWAY PUBLISHING CO. 

835 'Broadway, New York City 






Copyright, 1913 

BY 

TOM McINNES 



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©CI.A346616 
ft. fi / 



CONTENTS 

Page. 

Somewhat Concerning Ballades 1 

Ballade of Youth Remaining 32 

Ballade of the Free Lance 33 

Ballade of Action 34 

Ballade of Detachment 35 

Ballade on the Way 36 

Ballade of Good Women 37 

Ballade of Virtues 38 

Ballade of Meddlers 39 

Ballade of Friends 40 

Ballade of Ventures (Mirelle) 41 

Ballade of Jacqueline 42 

Ballade of the Picaroon 43 

Villanelle of Mutton (Old Style) 44 

Mirelle of Found Money 45 

Ballade of Fine Eating 46 

Mirelle of the Good Bed 47 

Ballade of the House of Ease 48 

Ballade of Golden Days 49 

Defeat (ViUanelle) 50 

Ballade of Evil 51 

Ballade of Woeful Certainties 52 

Tiger of Desire (VUlanelle) 53 

Ballade of the Body Diseased 54 

Elysium (Villanelle) * 55 

Ballade of the Self Concealed [,,,, 56 

Ballade of the Mystic and the Mud ,[[], 57 

God's Kaleidoscope 58 

Ballade of Comfortable Doctrine 60 

j^ii^ ;:;:::::::;:: ei 

iiconomy „„ 

Justice ""'.'.'".'.";i.';.'!.*].".'; ".";;;.■;.■ es 

i 



ii CONTENTS'--( contimted) 

. Page. 

Persistence 64 

Ballade of the Easy Way 65 

Aspiration 66 

White Magic 67 

Departure 68 

Ballade of Faith 69 

Good-Bye (Villanelle) 70 

Ballade of Rags 71 

To the Night (Cantel) 72 

Ballade of Sleep 73 

Ballade of the Lost Castle 74 

With the Seven Sleepers 75 

Ballade of Waiting 76 

The Isles of Gold 77 

Notes 78 




Sllgmra 0f a Wiannitr 



Some^vhat Concerning Ballades 

ONE morning in September I was strolling 
downhill toward the gray waterfront of 
Montreal. It was a morning to make one 
polite, and I was on business of no particular 
importance. Passing a fruit-stall, I saw a little boy 
looking wistfully at a heap of August apples. They 
were streaked with red and pale green, and to a know- 
ing eye well advertised the delicious tart juiciness 
between the core and the peel. In my mood I asked 
the boy to have some. He filled his pockets, and I 
took a couple for myself. They smelt good, and we 
ate them as two comrades, and with much smacking 
of our lips, on our way down a quiet side street. 

Already the remote air of autumn was over the city. 
Domes and steeples, churches, hotels, tenements, 
gaunt factories and commercial palaces, all alike were 
steeped in a fine golden haze. The trees were color- 
ing red and yellow in the surpassing way of Eastern 
Canada. About our autumn there is a lethal glamour; 
it is forever hinting at perennial loveliness beyond the 
mould and compass of this world; in high faith de- 
claring it, even while sinking before the desolate, des- 
perate, white face of winter. And in the fey light of 
that morning, and the apparent passing of things, I 

1 



went figuring another mode of time, wherein the, world 
and all is more happily perceived. To my immediate 
environment, however, I was recalled by a delighted 
exclamation from the boy. He had his eye on a gory 
picture, displayed in a shop window, by which he 
halted. There was a battle scene from some belated 
Christmas annual; furious masses of men; trampling 
horses; the glint of sword and bayonet; the reek of 
cannon; uproar, blood, and fire. He wanted the pic- 
ture very much, and that morning found that so far 
as I was concerned to ask was to receive. 

The shop from the outside was dingy and altogether 
unpromising. But within there seemed to me a per- 
fect treasure-trove of books. They were stacked in 
rather disorderly fashion on counter and shelves; 
many books greatly valued by a few, others to meet a 
more general taste, but little of the whole store really 
popular except the magazines. Because of dusty 
panes, and patches of brown and yellow paper pasted 
on them where the sun shone through, there was an 
atmosphere in the shop that made me think of amber 
and meerschaum. There were bluish rays through it 
from two small windows at the rear. The bibliopole 
in charge looked like a wood-cut from an early edition 
of Dickens or Balzac. He was rather tall and spare of 
frame, with a thin gray whisker, and he peered at me 
with eyes guileless as those of a baby or an old sea 
captain. His manner was courteous, but all the while 
he seemed intent on something quite apart from his 

2 



shop and his customer. I felt that he was more or less 
indifferent about the sale of books, and that he would 
much rather talk of them to any one whom he could 
deem an equal in bibliography. My esteem for him 
was deepened by repeated visits, and I found that he 
had a notable class of patrons. Eventually he got the 
notion that I had a taste for verse of the exotic or 
decadent order. This I might have denied, but on my 
second visit to his shop I happened to ask if he knew 
of any good metrical translation of Baudelaire, and 
from that question I suppose he came to a conclusion. 
It served to give me a somewhat hazy interest in his 
eyes, so I played up to the role assigned me, and as a 
result he brought various books to my attention which 
had been before that unknown to me. Among other 
things needed for my education, he suggested an an- 
thology of English verse done in antique Romanesque 
and Gallic forms. 

I always approach an anthology in the same dull, 
half-hearted way that I do a picture gallery or a table- 
d'hote dinner. The things presented mix in spite of 
me; they acquire a composite, inferior flavor from 
each other; I get stuffed without any distinct satis- 
faction. In an anthology there is nothing to match; 
one poem jars with another; there is not that harmo- 
nizing undertone imparted to a volume by a single 
author, whose manner and personality prevails through 
every line from the first to the last page. So I was 
not at first rightly made acquainted with these intri- 

3 



cate medieval forms. For all practical purposes I had 
been ignorant of them until I bought the anthology. 
Of their value in old French, or as to how well they 
satisfied an ancient demand, I cannot judge, for I am 
not learned in these matters. But from what I read 
of them they seemed for the most part parlor trifles, 
curios in rhyme, verbal bric-a-brac to the vigor of 
English unsuited. I found a few turned out in slang 
by Halverson of Toronto — ballade, villanelle, triolet, 
rondeau and roundel — more to my liking than the la- 
bored conceits of the anthology. And, doubtless, in 
Old Provence, when some troubadour-knight would 
set forth in springtime, with merry jongleurs by his 
side, to visit a neighboring castle, his plaints and love- 
songs uttered in these involved forms made good lis- 
tening for all his audience. But in first attempting 
them I felt as if I were fingering obsolete instruments 
in the dead atmosphere of a museum; rotes, rebecks, 
ghitterns, theorbos, gigues, cloncordes, galoots, and 
what not troubadourish fiddles; goblin-bellied things 
fantastically stringed; well enough one time maybe 
for a low serenade to some lady barely out of reach, 
but now fit for little more than a toy symphony. 
However, I am quite ready to admit that these forms 
may have merit beyond my appreciation. Certainly I 
have never been so crass as to undervalue precise form 
in verse. Quite the contrary. To me some verse- 
forms are destinate vehicles of poetic emotion; so 
much so as to appear in the order of nature. For 

4 



just as various minerals strive to crystal according to 
the pattern chosen by their informing spirit, so cer- 
tain moods will seek formal verbal expression, will 
seek to crystallize, and in so doing achieve an effect 
beyond the mere meaning of the words. Some of these 
forms will appear and persist through many lan- 
guages. These are essential forms, determined not sa 
much by the style or measure of a line as by the com- 
bination of lines in a stanza and the rhyme sequence. 
They have a quality akin to polarity. Consider, for 
instance, the Italian sonnet; its octave and sestet, its 
measures and rhyme-sequence, are no more arbitrary 
or artificial than the cube or hexagon or octagon in 
which some minerals express their highest vital ac- 
tivity. The English sonnet, the one original poetic 
form used by Shakespeare, altho inferior in form- 
value to the Italian, is nevertheless an essential 
form if written as four alternately-rhyming quatrains 
clinched by a couplet. When it does not show these 
lines of cleavage it is merely a fourteen-line poem, 
which can be as well done with twelve or sixteen lines 
so far as nicety of form goes. I had a fair acquaint- 
ance with all verse forms made native to English in 
the past, and after some examination of the Roman- 
esque forms in the aforesaid anthology I felt entitled 
to express an opinion concerning them. Of these re- 
stricted forms it seemed to me that with the exception 
of the Italian sonnet there was nothing to equal in 
form-value the French ballade. Yet in English we 

5 



find a hundred good sonnets for one good ballade. 
And some writers ask why, for the forms are equally 
ancient, and the one is no more difficult of achieve- 
ment than the other. Yet the true reason should be 
apparent at a glance. Think what would have been 
the fate of the Italian sonnet in English if Petrarch, 
Tasso, Michael Angelo and other Italians who con- 
firmed its shape had been misled into making the 
rhymes of its sestet answer to the rhymes of its oc- 
tave. If they had we may be sure that Mister School- 
master would have insisted upon keeping such a big 
drum blunder unaltered, and would have been super- 
cilious toward any other form and called it illegiti- 
mate, a term which he impertinently applies some- 
times to the Shakespearian sonnet. The Italian son- 
net in English would then have been as blighted with 
monotony as is now, for the most part, the French 
ballade. To this point I will return later when deal- 
ing with ballade structure. 

Of poetic forms in general it is to be noted that while 
literature sticks to its own language the forms pass on. 
To lift a masterpiece from one language to another is 
a bit of magic seldom accomplished. But it is done 
at times without loss ; it may be even with some gain. 
The fine English of Cranmer and other Elizabethan 
scholars probably improved what there is of literature 
in the Bible. No doubt Keats saw the glory of Homer 
through Chapman. Baudelaire gave Poe to France, as 
Fitzgerald gave Omar to us; Schlegel, they say, has 

6 



given Shakespeare to the Germans. But such trans- 
lations are indeed rare. Poetic forms, however, are 
easily adapted from one language to another; in fact, 
the forms will outlast the language in which they first 
appear. In some languages we find an excess of 
rhyme, rich or insipid, according to the twist of our 
ear. This seems to have been especially true of the 
Lang d'Oc. About the cord of that language the poets 
of Provence gave first shape to the alba, serena, sir- 
vente, canza, rondel, triolet, virelai, villanelle, and 
other verse-forms. Truly crystalline they appear, but 
blurred with unvaried rhyme. For excuse it may be 
said that in the Lang d'Oc it was probably more dif- 
ficult to keep the rhymes out of a stanza than put them 
in, and so, in order to maintain the metrical restric- 
tions and exclusiveness which some poets think a nec- 
essary part of their art, most of these poems were 
made to keep to one set of rhymes, those asso- 
ciated in the first stanza. This custom added to the 
difficulties of achievement, but largely at the expense 
of virility, color and euphony, the qualities most worth 
while in any poem. These troubadours of Provence 
trained themselves to many vaudeville tricks as a part 
of their calling, such as catching apples on the point 
of a dagger, leaping through rings, playing a great va- 
riety of instruments in difficult positions. It was all 
taken as part of their profession. And so quite natur- 
ally the spirit of vaudeville, the love of aptly doing 
difficult things in the most difficult way, made its in- 

7 



fluence felt in their verse-making. The poets of 
Northern France, whose tongue was destined to sur- 
vive the Lang d'Oc, took over these Provence forms, 
clung to their monotone rhyme system, and still fur- 
ther elaborated them. Then appeared the French bal- 
lade and the chant royal, the latter a monster of intri- 
cate monotony which in English is fairly humpbacked 
with the rhyme it carries. It staggers to a weary close 
after supporting sixty-one lines on a shift of only five 
rhyme-tones. Those who achieve these things may be 
word jugglers ; those who get delight of them may be 
persons of precise culture ; but musicians they are not. 
The chant royal is a trick for the sake of a trick; 
vaudeville triumphant in verse. And so with some 
other of these forms, these tours de force, notably the 
sestina. They all, however, have been seriously and 
exhaustively discoursed upon by old writers. If one 
chooses to study them, he may begin so far back as 
the year 1390, when appeared "The Art of Making 
Chansons, Ballades, Virelais and Rondels," by Eus- 
tache Deschamps; about a century later Henry de 
Croi published "The Art and Science of Rhetoric in 
the Making of Rhymes and Ballades"; then followed 
a treatise by one Antonio Tempo on the forms collect- 
ed in "The Spanish and Italian Apollo" of Rabanus 
Maurus; and so on down the centuries, until in Eng- 
lish one comes to Austin Dobson. In the Library of 
Parliament are several such books. But there is some 
danger in the study of them; you will risk the obses- 

8 



%i|gm^a of a ISouttb^r 

sion of rules ; you may become a mere metrical virtu- 
oso, and lose what poetic vision you have ; either that, 
or you will begin to scunner at all verse. The fine 
points of poetic form should be apparent at sight; 
should be appreciated without study; should, above 
all, not be rendered distasteful by pedantic anatomy. 
One admires a beautiful body, but the sense of beauty 
vanishes with dissection. Beauty can never be the 
subject of precise analysis ; it can never be evoked by 
formulas. Beauty is a spirit of which we are for a 
moment aware through some inexact synthesis of odor, 
color, sound, shape, motion, or verbal allusion. It 
arouses in varying degree a characteristic emotion, 
somehow reminiscent, somehow premonitory, under 
stress of which we vaguely feel the need of other 
senses with which to embrace something supremely 
desirable and presently unattainable. Beauty for our 
perception must have a body of some kind, but being 
too finical as to its body is the surest way to lose it. 
And so while poetic technique is well enough in its 
way, yet verse whose excellence is estimated by good 
conduct marks for obedience to rules and established 
usage has but the lowest form of beauty; it sinks to 
the level of being merely skilful, mathematic, or true 
to type. And this is well shown of ballads and bal- 
lades, concerning which I have learned a little for 
those who may be willing to take my say-so without 
troubling further. 
There is a Latin verb, "ballare," to dance. Ball, 

9 



ballet, billiards, ballad and ballade all come out of this 
verb. But iiow a ballad has little to do with dancing, 
and a ballade nothing. Yet always a thing is older 
than its name, and like enough the ballad as a com- 
bination of song and dance was universal long before 
Latin was contrived; probably it was familiar to folk 
of the Stone Age. Touching on this point, Puttenham 
said some time ago: 

**Poesie is more ancient than the artificiall of the 
Greeks and Latines, and used of the savage and un- 
civill, who were before all science and civilitie. This 
is proved by certificate of merchants and travellers 
who by late navigations have surveyed the whole 
world, and discovered wild people, strange and savage, 
affirming that the American, the Perusine, and the 
very Caniball do sing and also say their highest and 
holiest matters in certain riming versicles." — Art of 
English Poesie, 1589. 

The ballad as a popular song, the ballad as a popu- 
lar epic, and the ballade as a highly evolved poetic 
form beyond popular appreciation have this one feat- 
ure in common^ — the repetition of idea and phrase. 
This repetition is irregular in most songs and epics, 
regulated in such forms as the English roundelay and 
the Scotch ring-sang, and precise in the ballade, as 
hereafter shown. It is worth noting that the Eng- 
lish term "roundelay" is applied equally to songs and 
dances in which certain parts are repeated at set in- 
tervals. This tendency to rhythmic repetition continues 

10 



Sl^gm^a of a Somtt^r 

through all songs sung by men in the open, and gen- 
erally appears in the song and dance ballads rendered 
by the cantabanks of modern vaudeville. Here is a 
specimen stanza, picked up at random on the wharves 
of Montreal : 

As I went strolling down the street. 
All in the town of Rio, 

A damsel neat I chanct to meet 
Who closed at me one eye-o, 
Who winkt at me her eye-o! (jig ad lib.) 

Note, please, the last two lines. They exemplify a 
certain poetic device used as naturally and instinc- 
tively now by common song-smiths as it was used 
ages ago in primitive Hebrew prosody. I mean the 
repetition* of the same idea with some variation of 
words. Why this trick should be pleasing or effec- 
tive I do not know; but at times it is so very much. 
Perhaps it has some hypnotic influence. David con- 
tinually resorted to it in his psalms; and it has been 
used by many writers of English verse. I quote the 
following examples as I find them ready to hand; 
there may be others better : 

Praise him upon the loud cymbals: 

Praise him upon the high-sounding cymbals. 

— David. 

Our soul is bowed down to the dust: 
Our belly cleaveth unto the earth. 

—David. 
11 



He raiseth the poor out of the dust: 
He lifteth the needy out of the dimghill. 

—David. 

As the scoriae rivers that roll, 
As the lavas that restlessly roll 

Their sulphurous torrents down Yaanek 
In the ultimate climes of the pole: 

That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek 
In the realms of the boreal pole. 

—Edgar Allan Poc. 

And suddenly 'twixt his hand and hers 
He knew the twenty withered years — 
No flower, but twenty shrivelled years. 

— Francis Thompson. 

My theory is that certain emotions, ranging from 
ribald to sacred, if awakened in men of certain brain 
and temperament, will manifest fixt verbal forms, irre- 
spective of age or language, as fitly and inevitably as 
crystals about a cord, or frost-flowers upon a window- 
pane. 

These forms vary greatly in, construction and in- 
tricacy. Among the Hebrews they appear rudimen- 
tary; among the Persians they appear more complex 
than any used by the most extravagant rhymers of 
old France. 

The ballad in vogue in England and Scotland dur- 
ing the Middle Ages was a lay, or narrative poem, of 
simple and loose construction, and was concerned 
mainly with chivalric combat, beleaguered love, or 
some adventure in bright or dark faery. It was chant- 
ed at will to the vamping of a harp; contained an 

12 



indefinite number of stanzas of four, six or eight lines, 
alternating usually on four and three accents, the lines 
of three accents rhyming, the others unrhymed, or 
rhyming on themselves. Free use was made of asso- 
nance and alliteration. The following stanzas are 
quoted to show the average form and structure of 
these old ballads: 

Hearken to me, gentlemen; 

Come and you shall hear, 
I'll tell of two of the boldest brethren 

That ever born y-were. 

(Ballad of King Estmere, 15th Century.) 

And I would never tire Janet 

In fairyland to dwell. 
But aye at ilka seven years 

They pay the teind to hell: 
And I'm so fair and fat o' flesh 

I fear 'twill be mysel. 

(Ballad of Tamlane, 16th Century.) 

Gowden glist the yellow links 

That round her neck she'd twine; 
Her eyen were o' the skyie blue, 

Her lips did mock the wine; 
The smile upon her bonnie cheek 

Was sweeter than the bee; 
Her voice excellt the birdie's song 

Upon the birchen-tree. 

(Ballad of the Mermaid, 16th Century.) 

Sometimes these ballads had a refrain or chorus at 
the end of each stanza; sometimes a hey-derry-down 
between the lines, like the gai-faluron-falurette of the 
ancient French songs which one may hear in Quebec. 
Here is a refrain intended to be imitative : 

13 



As I cam in by Garioch land 

And doun by Netherha', 
There were fitty thousand Hielandmen 
A' marching to Harlaw, 

Wr a drie drie drie didronilie drie. 

(The Raid of Redswire, 16th Century.) 

A notable instance of a form passing to another 
language is found in one of the old ballads, the "Bat- 
tle of Harlaw." In that ballad is used the exact stanza 
of the French ballade; the stanza used by Villon in 
carrying on the tale of his Testaments. I quote two 
stanzas : 

The armies met, the trumpet sounds. 

The dandring drums aloud did tuck: 
Baith armies biding on the bounds 

Till ane o' them the field should brook: 

Nae help was there, for nane would douk. 
Fierce was the fight on ilka side. 

And on the ground lay many a buck 
Of them that there did battle bide. 

Sir James Scrimgeor of Duddop, knicht, " - 

Great Constable of fair Dundee, 
Unto the duleful death was dicht, — 

The King's chief bannerman was he: 

A valiant man of chevalrie. 
Whose predecessors won that place 

At Spey, with gude King William fric, 
'Gainst Murray and Macduncan's race. 

(Battle of Harlaw, 16th Century.) 

Such a form, however, is too involved for a straight- 
and-away story such as the old minstrels wished to 
tell. For what they wanted was a form to carry or 
make memorable a story, not a form to dominate a 

14 



sentiment or scrap of philosophy as supplied by the 
French ballade. The English ballad was brought to 
perfection by the Scotch. It was in that lost time 
when the Lowlanders of the Border were the knight- 
liest people of Europe. And that was before the time 
of Burns; before the sway of the Shorter Catechism 
and the smut of its reaction; a time when the true 
religion of the Border was high in the afterglow of 
legendary days — Gothic, Celtic, Arthurian, if you 
please — but far above Geneva and unafraid of Rome. 
As a last echo of that time will you find in any other 
literature lines so simply loyal and lorn as these : 

When day is gone, and night is come, 

And a' are boun to sleep, 
I think on them that's far awa' 
The lee lang night and weep, my dear — 

The lee lang night, and weep! 

(Early Jacobite.) 

or of quainter omen than these : 

Yestreen I saw the new Moon 

Wi' the auld Moon in her arms. 
And I fear, I fear, my Master dear, 

We shall have a dreadful storm! 

(Sir Patric Spens, 16th Century.) 

The French ballade is in nearly all respects dis- 
tinct from the ordinary ballad. Its form is pre- 
cise; it has no story to tell; its manner is lyric; 
its motive didactic. It is a vehicle for the reiteration 
of some sentiment or aphorism. Those who essay it 

15 



in English have been content with the final ''e" of 
French spelling, and consequent accentation of the 
second syllable, to distinguish it in name from the 
English ballad. Some other name might better have 
been chosen for sake of distinction. But however it 
be called a French ballade may be made in English in 
this manner: Take a single sentiment; beat up a 
tune answering to a line of three, four or five accents, 
but preferably four; strain the sentiment over eight 
such lines with a rhyme-sequence of a, b, a, b, b, c, b, c ; 
put the kernel of your idea, or the emphatic color of 
your sentiment, into the last line as the burden or re- 
frain of the poem. Then make two more such stan- 
zas, using the same rhyme-tones in the same order, 
and keeping the last line in each stanza the same as 
the last line of the first stanza. Having done this, 
smoothly finish the thing off with a quatrain, call it 
the envoy, address it by way of compliment to your 
prince, mistress, creditor, or other person in author- 
ity; keep the same rhyme-tones for this quatrain with 
the sequence b, c, b, c, and the refrain unaltered as in 
the preceding stanzas. This will be a ballade of the 
first form. 

The second form has three stanzas of ten lines with 
a rhyme sequence of a, b, a, b, b, c, c, d, c, d, and an 
envoy of five lines rhyming c, c, d, c, d. Ballades of 
the first form are allowed three rhymes ; those of the 
second form, four rhymes. And if your pedantry ex- 

16 



ceeds your esthetic sense, and you would show your 
skill, then you will permit the length of your refrain 
to not only dominate the length of each line, but if 
your refrain contains eight syllables you will adopt 
the eight-line stanza, and if ten syllables then the ten- 
line stanza ; and if neither eight nor ten syllables, then 
you will throw it aside and try another. The double 
ballade, the ballade of double refrain, and the chant 
royal are ballades built rococo. The double ballade 
has six stanzas of eight or ten lines with or without 
an envoy. The ballade of double refrain has a sub- 
ordinate refrain which occurs in the fourth line of 
each of the first three stanzas, and the second of the 
envoy, with a rhyme sequence of a, b, a, b, b, c, b, c, 
and the envoy rhyming b, b, c, c. To the chant royal 
I have already referred in a cursory way. The ba- 
roque ballade discards the refrain and envoy alto- 
gether, and is of indefinite length. It is the eight-line 
stanza of the first form continued till the theme is 
exhausted; each stanza independent as to its own 
rhymes, but keeping to the order of the first form; 
that is, a, b, a, b, b, c, b, c. This is a fine virile form, 
suited for descriptive, reflective, or even narrative 
verse, as shown by the Scotch ballad above quoted, 
the ^'Battle of Harlaw." No doubt the finest baroque 
in English is Sv/inburne's translation of Villon's 
"Complaint of the Fair Armouress." Unfortunately, 
Swinburne for once grew prudish, and gave us Vil- 
lon's greatest poem disfigured with printer's fig leaves. 

17 



This was a shameful thing to do. In the ipost offen- 
sive way possible it tells the reader that Villon has 
written verse unfit to print. Even if true, it is not 
necessary to blurt it out in this fashion; and for so 
doing Swinburne's pattering ragtime line in praise of 
his "sad, bad, glad, mad brother's name" will not 
atone. Some pleasant paraphrase might easily have 
been used to save the face of the bashful English 
reader. A hand so deft as that of Swinburne could 
surely have touched discreetly on all the dainty 
beauties of that young body of seduction so vividly 
recalled by the ancient Armouress when she "made 
moan for the old sweet days" : 

^'Squatting above the straw-fire's blaze, 
The bosom crush'd against the knee, — " 

But, despite the ugly asterisks which Swinburne left 
like pimples on the face of the poem, its authentic pic- 
ture of the tragedy of all time — beauty in decay — 
cannot be surpassed. 

Last winter in the midst of affairs I made some bal- 
lades. Some time in spring I broke them up and be- 
gan to remodel. The way of it was this: I had fol- 
lowed the form accurately enough, and found it no 
very difficult thing to do after a few trials. But I re- 
belled against the inadequate gamut of rhyme; the 
rectangular effect; the absolute lack of curve. I had 
read John Payne's translations of Villon, noting the 
"Ballad of Old Time Ladies," before I had come across 

18 



the exquisite rendering of that ballade by Rossetti. 
And studying Payne's translations, and also the bal- 
lades and other forms in the aforementioned an- 
thology, I dissented from their mode of construc- 
tion to the extent of thinking that in English linked 
stanzas of the Romanesque order should not be made 
entirely dependent upon preceding stanzas for rhyme - 
tones. The rule is irrational; the result satiety. The 
first stanza of a ballade in English will appear shapely 
and sound well if at all well done. But continuance 
of the same rhyme-tones through the second stanza 
will induce a faded effect, and the ideas, if any there 
happen to be, are apt to seem trite. As we enter the 
third stanza, we feel a sense of stuffiness from the 
same rhyme breathed too often; and generally by the 
time we find ourselves in the envoy we are longing to 
open a window in the thing and let in some fresh air. 
In prosody it is, of course, well to insist upon rules, 
if they be good rules. But one must not let rules 
become impertinent; above all if they sin against 
euphony. This is true for all matters of language, and 
need hardly be argued ; none but a grammarian would 
hold otherwise. Touching on grammar, by the way, 
brings to mind that rule concerning the verb to be. 
Suppose the French, in forming their language, had 
been dominated by schoolmen with abnormal respect 
for what they would call logic, but with ears dull to 
the cadence of vowels. Then the French of to-day, 
instead of rising above the rule of the verb to be when 

19 



euphony requires, as, vastly to their credit, they do, 
would now be trying to say "c'est je" instead of "c'est 
moi." The French, civilized beyond other races, recog- 
nize that clarity and euphony must be maintained as 
principles above all rules in language. For myself, 
when I am called upon to choose between a rule of 
grammar and my ear, always I bow to my ear. Thus 
I answer "me" to the query "who's there"; and I 
prefer to say "that's her" instead of "that's she." 

Accepting euphony, then, as a principle above all 
rules in prosody, I submit that in English the strict 
French form of ballade has too much drone about it 
to be desirable. It may sound otherwise, of course, in 
another language. With the French a "rime riche" 
goes well ; with us it is an insipid pun, unendurable in 
serious or even comic verse. So to the French the 
tone-value of their ballade may be great. That is an 
affair of the French. But it does not follow that we 
must either take it or leave it unchanged; it does not 
follow that writers of English may not modify the tone 
and at the same time retain the finest effect of the 
form. This has been done. I have already referred to 
a rendering by Dante Gabriel Rossetti of Villon's best- 
known ballade. Here it is : 

>^^ ELL me now in what hidden way is 
i ^ Lady Flora the lovely Roman? 

^^^ Where's Hipparchia, and where is Thais, 

Neither of them the fairer woman? 

Where is Echo, beheld of no man, 
Only heard on river and mere, — 

She whose beauty was more than human? 
But where are the snows of yester-year? 
20 



Where's Heloise, the learned nun. 

For whose sake Abeillard, I ween, 
Lost manhood and put priesthood on? 

From love he won such dule and teen! 

And where, I pray you, is the Queen 
Who willed that Buridan should steer 

Sewed in a sack's mouth down the Seine? 
But where are the snows of yester-year? 

White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies. 

With a voice like any mermaiden, — 
Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice 

And Ermengarde, the lady of Maine, — 

And that good Joan whom Englishmen 
At Rouen doom'd and burn'd her there, — 

Mother of God, where are they then? — 
But where are the snows of yester-year? 

Nay, never ask this week, fair lord. 
Where they are gone, nor yet this year, 

Except with this for an overword, — 

But where are the snows of yester-year? 

(The Ballad of Dead Ladies.) 

Now compare the above Rossetti form with two 
other versions of this ballade in the strict French form, 
the first by John Payne, the second by Andrew Lang. 



^^^J ELL me where, in what land of shade, 

i ^ Bides fair Flora of Rome, and where 

^^^/ Are Thais and Archipiade, 
Cousins-german of beauty rare. 
And Echo, more than mortal fair, 

That, when one calls by river flow 
Or marish, answers out of the air? 

But what is become of last year's snow? 

II. 

Where did the learned Heloisa vade. 
For whose sake Abelard might not spare 
21 



Such dole for love on him was laid 
Manhood to lose and a cowl to wear? 
And where is the queen who willed whilere 

That Burridan, tied in a sack, should go 
Floating down Seine from the turret-stair? 

But what has become of last year's snow? 

III. 

Blanche, too, the lily-white queen that made 

Sweet music as she a siren were; 
Broad-foot Bertha; and Joan the maid. 

The good Lorrainer the English bare 

Captive to Rouen and burned her there; 
Beatrix, Eremburge, Alys, — lo! 

Where are they. Virgin debonair? 
But what has become of last year's snow? 

Envoi. 
Prince, you may question how they fare 
This week, or liefer this year, I trow: 
Still shall the answer this burden bear: 
But what is become of last year's snow? 

(Ballade of Old Time Ladies.) 

y^^"^AY, tell me now in what strange air 
I B The Roman Flora dwells to-day: 
^J-— 5 Where Archippiada hides, and where 

Beautiful Thais has passed away? 

Whence answers Echo, afield, astray. 
By mere or stream, — around, below? 

Lovelier she than a woman of clay; 
Nay, but where is the last year's snow? 

Where is wise Heloise, that care 

Brought on Abeilard, and dismay? 
All for her love he found a snare, 

A mained poor monk in orders grey; 

And Where's the queen who willed to slay 
Buridan, that in a sack must go 

Afloat down Seine, — a perilous way — 
-Nay, but where is the last year's snow? 
22 



Where's that White Queen, a lily rare. 

With her sweet song, the Siren's lay? 
Where's Bertha Broadtoot, Beatrice fair? 

Alys and Ermengarde, where are they? 

Good Joan, whom English did betray 
In Rouen town and burned her? No, 

Maiden and Queen, no man may say; 
Nay, but where is the last year's snow? 

Envoi. 
Prince, all this week thou need'st not pray. 

Nor yet this year the thing to know: 
One burden answers, ever and aye, 
"Nay, but where is the last year's snow?" 

(Ballade of Dead Ladies.) 

These three translations preserve the same form, 
the same ideas, the same names, the same refrain. 
Rossetti, hov^ever, varies the rhyme-tones with each 
stanza, while Payne and Lang keep strictly to the 
French mode of three rhyme-tones for the entire poem. 
Rossetti's version from first to last is echoing a plain- 
tive antique melody in keeping with the burden of the 
poem; the withered whisper of sedge-grass by some 
clear pool in a barren land ; and in the distance the lute 
of a troubadour. The tone-value of the other two 
versions in comparison is — well, some people like the 
not unmusical buzz of a blue-bottle fly against a win- 
dow. In a wide world let each one have his choice. 
But to be quite fair to Payne, who, according to those 
who should know, was a most exact and scholarly 
translator, it must be admitted that his rendering of 
Villon's ^'Second Ballade of Lords of Old Time" in 
the strict French manner is a true poem from every 

23 



SI|gm?B of a Souttb^r 

standpoint, and surpassed in its way only by Rossetti's 
"Ballad of Dead Ladies," above quoted. Those who 
may care to follow this phase of ballade structure fur- 
ther should compare Swinburne's translation of Vil- 
lon's **Women of Paris" on the Rossetti model with 
the translation of the same ballade by Payne. This 
ballade is so poor a thing in itself that neither Swin- 
burne nor Payne could make much of a poem out of it, 
but the comparison will be useful for showing that it 
is easy enough to contrive in English the strict French 
model rather than that of Rossetti if any should con- 
sider it preferable ; to do it either way without loss of 
idea, figure or sentiment, but not without loss of tone 
and effective utterance; that will almost always be 
sacrificed if the strict French model be followed in- 
stead of the tone variation of Rossetti. 

To one who has the knack of rhyme, conjoined with 
the faculty which builds or solves verbal puzzles, these 
linked stanzas are not very difficult. But the selection 
and control of them is a nice affair. I would stop at no 
difficulty of construction which would be justified by 
results; but merely to retain or add metrical restric- 
tions for the sake of surmounting them, or of actually 
receiving suggestions therefrom, as recommended by 
one writer, is to debase one's art. Any restriction 
which is not essential to form or harmony is vicious. 
Neither complexity, nor rare or difficult modes of writ- 
ing, have any intrinsic poetic value. No true artist 
ever thinks an object or utterance more or less beauti- 

24 



ful because of its rarity or intricacy. Such a notion is 
excusable only in collectors of stamps or insects or 
blue china. A ruby now is as beautiful as in the days 
of Solomon, notwithstanding that science has now 
made it far more common. Gold will always be beauti- 
ful and platinum ugly in spite of the false taste which 
would countenance the use of platinum for jewelry in- 
stead of gold on account of its rarity. The Sun would 
gain nothing in beauty by appearing but once a year. 
And I assert that altho I have heard a man play tunes 
very acceptably on a fiddle, balancing himself the while 
on a slack wire, yet his music had no added value by 
reason of the difficult position maintained. Rather I 
appreciated the music the more when I closed my 
eyes to the acrobat. Yet Gleeson White, an accepted 
authority in these matters, actually speaks of restric- 
tions as if they had value in themselves, and, referring 
to French ballades in English, he says: "They must 
exhibit the art which conceals art, whether by intense 
care in every minute detail, or a happy faculty for 
naturally wearing these fetters. The dance in chains 
must be skilful, the chains worn as decorative ad- 
juncts, and the whole with as much apparent ease as 
the unfettered dancer could produce." 

I am impatient of any such conception of things 
poetic. A girl's foot compressed to an ugly knob was 
once a conventional Chinese notion of beauty in the 
extreme ; the so-called "golden lily foot," an unsightly 
bulb fit to be buried, but surely no lily. Why be such 

25 



a vaudevillian as to ask Terpsichore to try a two-step 
in chains, or Salome to dance in a hobble skirt? How- 
ever, Gleeson White has some strong backing for his 
views. Theophile Gautier, in an essay entitled "The 
Excellence of Poetry," says: 

"Even granting that fine prose is as good as fine 
verse, which I deny, is the overcoming of all difficulties 
not to count for anything? « * « I am well aware 
that there are plenty of people who claim that dif- 
ficulties should not be taken into account ; yet what is 
art if it be not the means of overcoming the obstacles 
nature puts in the way of crystallization of thought." 

And Andrew Lang, speaking of the ballade, quotes 
with approval another French writer, M. Lemaitre, 
as follows: 

"The poet who begins a ballade does not know very 
exactly what he will put into it. The rhyme, and 
nothing but the rhyme, will whisper things unexpected 
and charming, things he would never have thought of 
but for her, all united in the disorder of a dream. Noth- 
ing, indeed, is richer in suggestion than the strict laws 
of these difficult pieces ; they force the fancy to wander 
afield, hunting high and low, and while she seeks 
through all the world that foot that can wear Cinde- ^ 
rella's slipper, she makes delightful discoveries by the 
way." 

Such a poet I would sooner liken to a caterpillar as 
he goes creeping now this way, now that, among a 
mass of verbiage, seeking a passable route by which he 

26 



S%m?0 of n Snmtb^r 

may arrive at some place not in view and unguessed of 
at the beginning of his tour. Hear, rather, what Bau- 
delaire says : 

"A good author is already thinking of his last line 
as he is penning his first." 

From a height one may overlook the whole of a 
forest which he is to traverse on his way to an in- 
tended goal, and he may see the goal also, without 
seeing the flowers that will lie in his path, or even 
all the trees. Thus I agree that seldom can any poem 
worth while be commenced the end of which is not 
already determined in the writer's mind. But of course 
"things unexpected and charming," as Lemaitre says, 
may be met with on the tangled way from the first to 
the last verse. Nevertheless, a true poem is conceived 
in a moment; at the moulding and lining of it a man 
may take his time. And this must be as true of a 
ballade as of any other form of poem. Maintaining 
this for the content of such a ballade, I have felt that 
as to tone the modification made by Rossetti of dif- 
ferent rhymes for different stanzas will be found more 
harmonious in our language than the restricted French 
method of construction, and with some natural dif- 
fidence I have attempted to show cause. 

The Rossetti form of ballade consists of three stan- 
zas of eight lines and a closing quatrain, each line 
turning on four accents without regard to syllables. 
Accent, or stress, as declared by Coleridge, and always 
tacitly recognized by Scottish and English poets, is 

27 



the one essential feature of verse in English. In all 
respects except disregard of syllables and variation of 
rhyme-tones for each stanza, allowing only for the 
same tone in each third line before the refrain, the 
Rossetti form of ballade follows the French form first 
hereinbefore described. In Rossetti's "Ballad of Dead 
Ladies" many of the rhymes are oblique ; some to the 
extent of being mere assonances. But in this poem 
they have a rich sweetness as of choice dried fruits. 
In the closing quatrain Rossetti even repeats the same 
word in lieu of a rhyme. No matter, his work in this 
case has grace by its very f.reedom ; the effect is com- 
plete. Speaking generally as to the closing quatrain, 
or envoy, I think it should not perforce be addressed 
to any particular person ; neither should it be regarded 
as the climax or peroration of the poem. Rather let it 
be heard as the closing chord ; the final echo. That is 
about all I would say concerning ballades. 

Most guitar players are familiar with the old Span- 
ish mode of tuning their instrument. It is still used 
for some fandangoes and special pieces. But in gen- 
eral a better effect is had by the modern mode of 
longer intervals between the open strings. And the 
instrument is still a guitar. I say this because in Que- 
bec one has ventured to vary the villanelle with al- 
tered interval and added rhyme, practically compress- 
ing the Italian terza rima into villanelle form. I 
submit four such in this book; also three mirelles, 
using a local form, five stanzas of five lines linked. 

28 



The few who care about these punctilious forms 
may say that it is an impertinence to alter them; 
doubtless the many who are indifferent to them will 
think we make much ado about nothing. For the gen- 
eral public, rightly enough, is as little concerned for 
the technicalities of verse as for the classifications of 
the conchologist. Major, minor, minimus, the chief 
trouble with poets apart from being hard put to it for 
a living, is that they take themselves too seriously; a 
failing they share with other artists and a few lone 
priests, reformers, knights-errant, and such like fel- 
lows who follow the gleam. And yet perhaps it is 
only out of loyalty to their ideal that they trouble to 
lay emphasis on themselves in a world so overcrowded 
with respectable materialists. Addressing said mate- 
rialists, Theophile Gautier, in his essay, **The Utility 
of Poetry," puts in a plea for himself and his kind 
this way: 

"Write prose as much as you please, but let us write 
verse. Plant potatoes, but do not pull up tulips. Fat- 
ten geese, but do not wring the necks of nightingales. 
* * ♦ You fancy that happiness consists in prop- 
erly cooked beefsteaks and sound electoral laws. I 
think highly of both these things, but comfort is not 
enough. Every select organization must have art, 
must have beauty, must have form." 

And in his other essay, "The Excellence of Poetry," 
from which I have already quoted, he says: 

"Poets are fit to do other things beside rhyming in 

29 



verse, although I fail to see what better a man can do 
than write good verse." 

That to me sounds right and reasonable enough. 
But on the other hand a scientific old friend of mine, 
feeling called upon to speak encouragingly of some 
verse I had written, said to me recently : "By George, 
sir, it's fine; I understood every bit of it; it's just as 
good as prose !" He honestly intended that for a com- 
pliment, and I suppose it was — of a sort. But I know 
that he would not value a cathedral or mosque solely 
for its seating capacity or acoustic properties ; he has 
the higher sense of architecture. I know that he would 
not think to praise a painter by telling him that his 
work was as good as a photograph ; and I am sure that 
observing a rock crystal and an ordinary lump of 
quartz he would appreciate the intrinsic beauty of 
form apart from substance. But to any effect in poetic 
form apart from literal meaning he would appear im- 
perceptive as a clam ; built that way, perhaps, or like 
enough a result of being pestered in youth with met- 
rical versions of the Psalms, or of being made to mem- 
orize verse by the yard when he should have been at 
play. And all the while there is so much verse and so 
little poetry. This because the form is symbolic, and 
the content is seldom worthy of the form. Here is a 
test: If what has been expressed in verse would lose 
virtue in prose— if it cannot be given such effective 
utterance in prose — then such verse is poetry. Other- 
wise, it is only something which may be as good as 

30 



Stjgmf fii of a Souttbtr 

prose, but which usually is not. Yet I will have no 
quarrel with those who cannot perceive the symbolic 
value of form in verse; nor for that matter will I 
quarrel with any of my few good friends to whom 
these roundabout rhymes which I have written are 
mere eccentricities to be quietly ignored on accpunt 
of more understandable doings with which they credit 
me. After all, we had as well be frank about it, and 
not pretend to enjoy any phase of art through which 
the light does not come to us. In art, as in the other 
practices designed to relieve human hunger or pain — 
cookery, religion, medicine — we had best be guided 
simply by the effect upon our own selves. Holding 
fast to principles I would move loosely among rules 
whenever any question of beauty is involved. For 
beauty is something too divine for definition; it will 
tolerate no limitation or criterion; it is the one thing 
supreme above all that we conceive as truth, utility or 
morality; and wherever and however perceived, it is 
not the mode of perceiving that should engross us, but 
the fact; the fact that we are privileged above other 
animals, some of us, to become aware of beauty in any 
degree at all is to me the most heartening and hopeful 
thing in life. 

TOM McINNES. 
Ottawa, September, 1912. 



31 



Ballade of Youth Remaining 

y^^^ ARDON if I ravi.1 rl,„r«» ^ 



Q 



ARDON if I ravel rhyme 

Out of my head disorderly! 
Forgetting how the rats of time 
Are nibbling at the bones of me! 
But while upon my legs I'm free 
Out in the sunlight I intend 

To dine with God prodigiously: 
Youth is a splendid thing to spend! 
Here's to the man who travels still 
In the light of young discoveries! 
Here's to the fellow of lusty will, 
Who drives along and hardly sees 
For glamour of great realities 
The doom of age! This line I send 

To all who sing hot litanies: 
Youth is a splendid thing to spend! 
But 'tis not all a matter of years : 

'Tis a way of living handily 
In a game with Life, while yet appears 
A glory near of victory; 
With ventures high, and gallantry 
Twinkling 'round the nearest bend 

Where damsels and fine dangers be: 
Youth is a splendid thing to spend! 
Fellows, come and ride with me 

Swiftly now to the edge of the end. 
Holding the Stars of Joy in feel- 
Youth is a splendid thing to spend! 
32 



Ballade of the Free Lance 

nET me face some bright hazard 
Against the rowdy World for you ! 
A foe to strike, a friend to guard, 
Or the looting of somt rascal crew, 

Oh, the like of this I'm taking to 
As on my way I make advance. 

And queer vicissitudes come through. 
Full of adventure and multiple chance ! 
So far, you see, I've not been slain, 

Tho' now and then I've sought to raid 
Some richly opportune domain. 

Only to find the plan I made 

BaflSed by engine or ambuscade; 
But I salute the circumstance, 

And slip aside ; oh, the World is laid 
Full of adventure and multiple chance! 
And while I'm free to ride ahead. 

With here or there some prize in view. 
Few dangers of the way I dread, 

Tho' oft my hungriness I rue : 

Still, betimes a crust will do 
Cracking fine to nonchalance, 

And every day the World is new. 
Full of adventure and multiple chance! 
For me the road of many directions — 

For me the rhyme of long romance! 
For me the World of imperfections — 

Full of adventure and multiple chance ! 
33 



Q 



Ballade of Action 

O fat security hath charms 

To keep me always satisfied: 
What ho! Excursions and alarms! 
A scheme, a plot, a ripping tide 

Of rude events to prick my pride, 
Or crack the shell of my conceit 

Upon the edge of things untried ! 
This is the fate that I would meet. 
Now let some bully thing intrude. 

And bugle to the soul of me! 
I grow stale with quietude. 

And this too safe monotony : 

O good my friend or enemy 
Call me back to the battling street! 

For high low variety — 
This is the fate that I would meet. 
To more than keep oneself alive 

Is the way to live when all is said: 
To sight a prize, and chase and strive 

With strong will and cunning head 

For something surely more than bread. 
Or from the bitter steal the sweet, 

And steal it while the risk is red— 
This is the fate that I would meet. 
To conquer finely, or to sink 

Debonair against defeat. 
This is the rarest grace I think — 

This is the fate that I would meet. 
34 



Ballade of Detachment 



C5 



HE Lords of Karma deal the cards, 

But the game we play in our own way : 
Now as for me, and as regards 
The gain or loss from day to day, 
I go detach'd ; I mean to say 
That I live largely as I please. 

Whether it does or does not pay 
Among the inequalities. 
With duties not too much engross'd. 

With profits not too much concerned, 
Not to glean to the uttermost, 

Nor grieve for what I might have earn'd, 
This for my soul's sake I have learn'd, 
Reaching for sweeter things than these: 
Pennies and fractions I have spurn'd 
Among the inequalities. 

Oh damnable palavering 

Of pedagogues too regular! 
I'd rather be a tramp, or sing 

For my living at a bar. 

Or peddle peanuts, far by far, 
Than lose my reasonable ease 

In tow of rule and calendar 
Among the inequalities. 

Content if I may go a bit 

In my own way before I cease ; 
Living trimly by my wit 

Among the inequalities. 
35 



n 



Sl|gm^2 of a Sounb^r 
Ballade on the Way 

ET saints abstract on subtle planes 
Revolving occult theories, 
Unravel all till naught remains, 

And vanish then howe'er they please ! 

But as for me, in place of these, 
The savor of flesh and blood ! The zest 

And blaze of vast idolatries! 
This is the object of my quest. 
Let saints who stoop to lift the woe 

From off the living and the dead, 
On with their heavy labors go 

Till all be heal'd and comforted! 

But as for me, I seek instead 
Assurance to the sparkling crest 

Of ecstasies unmerited ! 
This is the object of my quest. 
Beauty to me hath been a name 

Holier than all God's avatars: 
The unconcern'd eternal Flame 

Whose fitful gleams between the bars 

Of space and time unto the stars 
And outer vacancies attest 

Elysium that nothing mars! 
This is the object of my quest. 
Oh let me for a moment merge 

Within the glory vaguely guess'd ! 
Yea, tho' I perish on the verge ! 

This is the object of my quest. 
36 



Ballade of Good Women 



® 



OMEN I value as they serve 

Us men with all their qualities : 
The kindly eye, the winsome curve, 
And voice atune for melodies, 
Oh, high we hold the worth of these ! 
But this is the best a man can say 

Of factory girls or fine ladies : 
Good women give themselves away. 

So have our comforts much increased. 

Despite the neuter maids who cling 
To fad or fancy, book or priest, 

Perversely 'gainst their fashioning: 

Lord, in the end 'tis a sickly thing, 
Still order it for us I pray 

That mainly without reckoning 
Good women give themselves away. 
Let sing who will in praise of her 

By some unique ambition led. 
Queen at college or theatre, 

Or class'd in a convent with the dead ! 

I honor the girls who choose instead 
The ancient duties, day by day. 

As wives and mothers and makers of bread : 
Good women give themselves away. 

Little I care what they be doing. 
What creed they follow or disobey, 

If evermore for our renewing 

Good women give themselves away. 

37 



(D 



Ballade of Virtues 

E make too much of right and wrong : 
Three virtues sum it all, nor less 

Nor more, and we who crawl along 
By light of them our way may guess 

Out of the world's ungodly mess, 
Whether we look to the cross, or whether 

To idols of genial heathenness : 
We who are all in the mud together. 
Courage, cleanliness, charity: 

There are no virtues fixt but these : 
On these, the sole essential three, 

We base our rising tendencies. 

And various moralities 
To suit our age, or maybe the weather, 

Or stress of chance necessities: 
We who are all in the mud together. 
Many to ancient names, and some 

To newer creeds and altars cling: 
But shining down the ages come 

Three virtues, never altering, 

By which alone our souls we bring 
Out of the primal ooze and nether 

Gulfs whence we are clambering: 
We who are all in the mud together. 
Courage, cleanliness, charity: 

Hold by these to the end of the tether, 
For only these may lead us free : 

We who are all in the mud together. 
38 




S%m?0 of a Snuttln^r 
Ballade of Meddlers 

PLAGUE on those who would regulate 

Every detail of our troubled lives ! 
Let's eat and drink and*fight and mate 
And leave to God what then survives ! 

Thus every man for himself contrives 
His inexact best quality: 

Ministers, medicals, meddlesome wives, 
Go your way and let folks be ! 
O anxious saviours of men and such 

Thanks for your help in our evil plight! 
But please don't save us all too much ! 

When God woke up and call'd for light 

He set things turning from left to right, 
A good enough sign it seems to me 

That we shall turn thus without you — quite : 
Go your way and let folks be ! 
For man and beast and imp and elf 

One rule is writ in language terse : 
Each must answer to himself 

In the sequence of the universe : 

And we may crawl from the primal curse 
Fast if we choose, or leisurely. 

But meddlers aye make matters worse : 
Go your way and let folks be ! 
Maybe a helping hand is the best 

Signal from God that ever we see : 
But that's one thing, and for the rest, 

Go your way and let folks be ! 
39 



X 



Ballade of Friends 

CHANGE myself, and so no more 
Will cry against inconstancy : 
The chiefest pals I had of yore 
Without offence may tire of me : 

And they are free, and I am free, 
To seek new faces down the line — 

But yet I say wherever I be : 
AH good fellows are friends of mine! 
No talk of race or caste or creed; 

No fault of hair, no shade of skin. 
Shall bar me of my choice, indeed 

The sweetest nut may lie within 

The toughtest shell ; 'twould be a sin 
To lose a comrade, or resign 

My company for cause so thin : 
All good fellows are friends of mine! 
They fail us now and then, of course ; 

And some are rascals more or less : 
Some cajole us to endorse. 

And leave us in the lurch : oh, yes ; 

But to relieve our loneliness 
If only for a day is fine: 

For that we owe them some, confess : 
All good fellows are friends of mine! 
Whether at sea or whether on shore, 

Or at the job or over the wine ; 
Whether on two legs, whether on four- 
All good fellows are friends of mine ! 
40 



u 



Sllgm^a of n Sounb^r 
Lady of Ventures 

Mirelle. 
ADY of Ventures weaving gold 

From next to nothing tell me, pray. 
Some novel thing to do! Unfold 
Some fine employ or project bold 
Or sly detour along my way! 

From London town to far Cathay 
The many live in drab durance : 
But evermore your colors play. 
Lady of Ventures, grave or gay. 
Over the regions of Romance. 

And some who find you sideways glance, 
Nor scorn to reach thro' gates obscure 
Forbidden vistas that entrance, 
And glimmer with caprice and chance 
To alter destinies grown dour. 

Whether to some moonlit amour, 

Or quest of hidden treasury. 
Or valiant or outlandish lure, 
They follow you, and think for sure 

'Tis worth whatever the cost may be. 

Thro' drear lanes of poverty. 

Thro' little shops, and garrets old, 
I've seen you wander truantly. 
And pass tiptoe, and beckon me, — 
O Lady of Ventures weaving gold! 
41 



X 



Ballade of Jacqueline 

MET by chance a milliner, 

A girl by name of Jacqueline: 
June-sweet was the voice of her, 
And wonderful eyes of aquamarine, 

Pale blue and pale green, 
Appealed from her face of ivory, 

Too wild to care how she were seen 
Down town o' nights with me. 
In a fussy shop thro' daylight hours 

Trimly she fashion'd vanities; 
Scraps of birds, and crazy flowers, 

Trifles of straw and fripperies. 

To put on the heads of fine ladies : 
But after six, when she was free, 

Jacqueline went as you please 
Down town o' nights with me. 
Jacqueline was a good chum 

For gay streets and vaudeville; 
And I spent my coin, when I had some, 

For the pleasure it was to see her feel 

The light dream of the moment real. 
Or hearken awhile to her velvety 

Low laughter over a meal 
Down town o' nights with me. 

Jacqueline has gone away 

To marry a man of property; 
Jacqueline no more will play 

Down town o' nights with me. 
42 



Ballade of the Picaroon 



X 



KNEW him for a picaroon 

Among the purlieus of the town : 
At free lunch in a beer saloon 
To wash the cheese and pickles down. 
With pretzels hard and salt and brown, 
We drank and talk'd of all our schemes 
To banish Fortune's chronic frown: 
He was a fine fellow of dreams. 

He loved the light piquant details 

Of life beyond mere livelihood ; 
And while he covered many trails 

More tricks he play'd and girls he woo'd 

And bottles emptied than he should 
For that success the World esteems : 

But after a fashion he made good: 
He was a fine fellow of dreams. 
Because I heard his death to-night 

Told in the hotel corridor 
I left the crowd for the cool starlight 

And the lone ways : my heart was sore 

That I should see his face no more 
Where the wheel turns, and the light gleams, 

And the air reels to the World's uproar : 
He was a fine fellow of dreams. 

My friend he was and he died too soon : 
'Tis always too soon for his like it seems : 

But he lived while he lived, that picaroon — 
He was a fine fellow of dreams. 
43 



V 



Villanelle of Mutton 

Old Style. 

ERY sick and tired I am 

Of stewed prunes, and apples dried, 
And this our mutton that once was lamb ! 



I will make no grand salaam 

For the stale cakes the gods provide! 
Very sick and tired I am ! 

My indignant diaphragm 

Would cover something fresh, untried,— 
Not this mutton that once was lamb ! 

How every verse and epigram 

Of hope the lagging years deride ! 
Very sick and tired I am ! 

Must I always then be calm. 

And talk as one quite satisfied 
With this our mutton that once was lamb? 

Frankly, I don't give a dam 

For taste of things too long denied ! 
Very sick and tired I am 
Of this our mutton that once was lamb ! 
44 



Mirelle of Found Money 

XGOT a thousand dollars to-day 
By chance and undeservedly: 
But nary a one of my debts will I pay : 
Sure it never was meant to be spent that 
way: 
'Tis a gift from my fairy godmother, you 
see. 

Except of course to my landlady, 
And some on account to the tailor Malone : 

And there'll be a new dress, and a hat maybe, 

For the lame girl who is good to me: 

But the rest of these dollars are all my own. 

A thousand dollars and all for my own : 

The thought of it runs like a tune through my head: 
So long it is since I have known 
One lavish hour, one fully blown 

i?ose of joy unheralded! 

Tho* we of the world must grind for bread 

'Tis a plan I hold in small esteem : 
And while I can taste I let no dread 
Of later want contract the spread 

Of my desire for cakes and cream* 

Wrapt in myself, obscure, supreme, 

I slip thro* streets and quarters gay. 
And the comic crowd I see in a dream, 
But glory be — this is no dream : 

I got a thousand dollars to-day ! 

45 



D 



Ballade of Fine Eating 

IGH up I climb'd in a cherry tree : 

Heigho, how the years have fled ! 
June and the World lay under me. 
While the juicy fruit just overhead 
Hung clustering thick and ripe and red,— 
For a boy of ten 'twas a glorious sight : 
Say, do you wonder now that I said : 
Bully for my big appetite ! 

Far in the North I sought for gold : 

Foolish I was and most unfit : 
Starving, alone, and numb with cold, 

When I found on the trail a dog-biscuit : 

How I gnaw'd its edges bit by bit! 
*Twas a savory thing to crunch and bite, 

And I fed on every crumb of it : 
Bully for my big appetite ! 

But give me a friend this night for a feast, 

And one well-served exquisite dish ! 
He may have what he will of bird or beast, 

Or take his choice of fat sea-fish ; 

And we'll drink of the best thing liquorish, 
Bottled in years of old delight. 

To wake on our palate the lost relish : 
Bully for my big appetite ! 
Me for a nook in a fine kafay. 

With any potvaliant rake to-night ! 
And if to-morrow the Devil's to pay — 

Bully for my big appetite ! 
46 



Sljgm^B of a Snuttb^r 
Mirelle of the Good Bed 



c 



HERE'S nothing so good as a good bed 
When a body is over and done with day ! 
I'd like a place to lay my head 
In a clean room unfrequented 
And dark, unless for a moon-ray. 



O Angel of Dreams, without delay 

Then let me from this World be gone ! 
Within a temple I would pray 
Where golden odors float alway 
Onward to oblivion. 

Or haply may I be withdrawn 
From pain and care and manners mean 

Into some fairy tower whereon 

The glim bejewell'd gonfalon 
Of blue enchantery is seen? 

But a lady I know might come between 

Laughing, and lead me far astray 
On the flowery edge of a wild ravine 
Where wild cascades of waters green 
Flash in the pleasant light of May. 

Thus let me dream the night away, 
Or slumber dreamless with the dead ! 

Life may resume, but now I say. 

Being too weary of the day, 
There's nothing so good as a good bed! 
47 



Ballade of the House of Ease 

HELLO, MARIE! You sweet old girl, 
You of the Province cool and true, 
I'm fagg'd and done with the City whirl. 
And I've come for quieting to you ! 

I'm out of the game, Marie ; I'm through, 
And want but a chair in the sunlight placed. 

With nothing to do, dear, nothing to do- 
Give me now these hours to waste! 
Something to eat? Well, after while 

I'd like a chicken fricassee 
Cream'd in good Acadian style 

With ketchup and things peppery, 

And a twist of bread and pot o' tea: 
A supper that to the Queen's taste 

If you will cook it! But, Marie, 
Give me now these hours to waste ! 
My Lady in your House of Ease, 

Clean of all pretence and mask, 
Let me lounge just as I please. 

Tossing from me every task! 

Let me like^ome lizard bask 
Fatly with my soul effaced 

In the sun ! No more I ask^ — 
Give me now these hours to waste! 
For I've been troubled overlong. 

And I'd be quit of stress and haste, _g| 

And quit of doing, right or wrong,— ™ 

Give me now these hours to waste! 
48 



r 

filygm^a of a Sntmb^r 
Ballade of Golden Days 



I 



WEARY of living from hand to mouth. 

Battling for mean necessities: 
I'm in a desert, and a drouth 
Comes over all the oases 
Where I have sought myself to ease 
In lawful and unlawful ways : 

I had no care for things like these 
Far away in the Golden Days. 

Let me go where my father went — 

My father who was good to me ! 
This World has grown so virulent 

And sodden now with misery! 

But once we fought it joyously, 
Ever on some crusade ablaze 

For spicy isles o' the wind-swept sea- 
Far away in the Golden Days. 

Oh with some glad intoxicant 
These wasted nerves of mine relieve ! 

Do me a magic, and enchant 
These sordid chambers to conceive 
In crimson colors, while I weave 

My fancies to the airy phase 

Of things he taught me to believe — 

Far away in the Golden Days. 

Nay, what now? What aura strange — 
What glamour of new life allays 

This old despair? Again I range 
Far away in the Golden Days. 
49 



(D 



Slfgm^B of a fintmb^r 
Defeat 

Villanelle. 

E may dream of what hath been, 
But this will alter all our ways : 
This is the thing that was not foreseen. 



Tho' we avoid the rabble gaze 

Yet must we keep some face to show : 
We are untouch'd, the World says. 

Haply the World may never know 

The marish grief and bitterness 
That covers us ; 'tis better so. 

For we who gloried to excess 

Now only ask that none may see 
These hours averted, comfortless. 

Of our defeat there yet may be 

Some gray reward in after days: 
Oh ache my heart — but quietly ! 

While the shadow with us stays 
We may dream of what hath been ; 

But this will alter all our ways — 
This is the thing that was not foreseen. 
50 



e 



Ballade of Evil 

VIL! What poor argument 

We mortals hear to make us trust 
That as for God he never meant 
To bait this hook of pain with lust ! 
Then by what devil was it thrust 
Thro' the filmy first upheaval 

Of our planetary dust? 
No man knoweth the end of evil. 

By dint of wishing, sages say, 

Things shape themselves much as we see; 
And filth and pain are the price we pay 

Largely for the will to be ; 

That we evolve contingently 
On such acceptance and receival : 

Is this the measure of God's mercy? 
No man knoweth the end of evil. 

Say if you choose there is naught but good: 
Harden your heart and soften your brain : 

Say wrong is right misunderstood: 
Close your eyes to filth and pain : 
Swear all is right and all is sane, 

And all correct from days primeval : 

And then — well, then what will you gain? 
No man knoweth the end of evil. 

We strive in mud forever obscure. 
Forever in hope of some reprieval, 

But living or dead we are not sure : 

No man knoweth the end of evil, 

51 



Ballade of Woeful Certainties 

^w^ E must kill if we would live : 
^ ■ ^ This is the first of certainties : 
VM^ Go^ leaves us no alternative 

Despite the preachers' sophistries : 

Let them argue as they please 
The jungle law is over us ! 

For any man who cares or sees 
This World of ours goes ruinous. 
We must weak and ugly grow : 

This is the worst of certainties : 
'Tis a pretty thing to be young, I know. 

And life is full of pleasantries : 

But age and pain will bend the knees 
Of the strongest, fairest, best of us: 

No bodies reach beyond disease : 
This World of ours goes ruinous. 
We must all in the graveyard lie : 

This is the last of certainties: 
Strange horizons some descry. 

That to the mass are fantasies : 

But take your choice of theories 
To meet an end so villainous. 

In this at least each one agrees : 
This World of ours goes ruinous. 
Brother, I see too much to think 

That dust is the utter end of us : 
But oft from what's involved I shrink: 

This World of ours goes ruinous. 
52 




Tiger of Desire 

Villanelle. 

TARVING, savage, I aspire 

To the red meat of all the World : 
I am the Tiger of Desire ! 

With teeth bared, and claws uncurl'd, 

By leave o' God I creep to slay 
The innocent of all the World. 

Out of the yellow glaring day, 

When I glut my appetite, 
To my lair I slink away. 

But in the black returning night 

I leap resistless on my prey, 
Mad with agony and fright. 

The quick flesh I tear away. 

Writhing till the blood is hurl'd 
On leaf and flower and sodden clay. 

My teeth are bared, my claws uncurl'd, 
Of the red meat I never tire ; 

In the black jungle of the World 
I am the Tiger of Desire! 
53 



Sllgm^B of u Snunb^r 
Ballade of the Body Diseased 

^ (Skw T^ think the sky should be so blue, 
£^\ And the air still yield its clean caress ! 
m^ J That I should see these flowers that strew 
^^^ The altar of God's loveliness 
And cease adoring now! Ah yes, 
But something foul within me squirms 

A trail of bloody rottenness ! 
I will not live upon these terms. 

Must I who had of youth and bliss 

In fullest measure be content 
Merely to live in mire like this? 

Shall my remaining days be spent 

And my loved body now be lent 
As stuff that alters or confirms 

Some medical experiment? 
I will not live upon these terms. 

I shall end it when I choose 

If it can end so easily ! 
Dripping Upas avenues 

Before me loom unhappily: 

Things magnified too monstrously 
From infinite mephitic germs 

Are loosed on me indecently : 
I will not live upon these terms. 

O stricken body, now for you 

Decay, and the silent work of worms! 

To think the sky should be so blue! 
I will not live upon these terms. 

54 



Elysium 



CD 



Villanelle. 

OTHER, for a moment come 
To the bars that intervene : 
Tell me of Elysium! 



Tell me how you live serene 

Upon that fair and lovely shore : 
Free of grief and burdens mean! 

For I so broken am and sore 

To me God's mercy now 'twould seem 
To die indeed and be no more. 

You are with the Seraphim, 
While below I wander on, 
Groping through a fearful dream. 

My love of life at last is gone: 

Of life what favor may I glean 
Outvaluing oblivion? 

Here for dim relief I lean : 
O Mother, for a moment come 

To the bars that intervene ! 
Unveil, unveil Elysium ! 

55 



Ballade of the Self Concealed 



G 



HIS of you is not the best, 

This little self so anxious here: 
Partially you manifest, 

But you are other than the mere 
Mind and body you appear: 
Behind the scenes it seems to me. 

From day to day and year to year. 
You remain essentially. 
You wake and sleep : the small impress 

Of things around soon passes : still 
This consciousness is more or less 

Some phosphorescence of the Will : 

A surface light too weak to fill 
The underlying entity 

Whose lust of living naught may kill: 
You remain essentially. 
And while your body wears away. 

And all your thoughts disintegrate, 
You weave new vestures every day. 

And dreams with dreams obliterate: 

For you the outer ways await 
Because of your desire to be : 

But high or low, thro* every state. 
You remain essentially. 
From life to life you dwell within 

A candle gleam of memory; 
And as it vanishes — what then? 

You remain essentially. 
56 



Sligm^a of a H^cnnitt 
Ballade of the Mystic and the 



X 



Mud 

F I from universal mud 

By chance malign came bubbling 
Uncouthly into flesh and blood. 
Ugly, futile, struggling, 

All in mud again to bring, — 
Why then at the heart of me 

What is this that needs must sing? 
There is no end to mystery. 
If I, with reverence, would read 

Upon the mud God's autograph, 
And find instead a wormy scfeed. 

With never a sign on my behalf 

To light my coming epitaph, — 
Why then at the heart of me 

What is this that needs must laugh? 
There is no end to mystery. 
If I, a mere automaton 

In a brief and paltry play, 
Am but a group of atoms drawn 

Powerless upon my way 

To mud again, as savants say, — 
Why then at the heart of me 

What is this that needs must pray? 
There is no end to mystery. 

Brother, kneel intuitive 

To a stone if you will, or a carven tree ! 
And sing and laugh and pray — and live! 

There is no end to mystery. 
57 




God's Kaleidoscope 

UCH too much of this I have heard: 

The World is growing forever old. 

Its flowers perish in the mould, 

And all things pass as a tale that is told: 

Life is a glimmer, fading fast 

Into the charnel of the Past, 

And Death is ever the final word. 

O much too much of this I have heard ! 

Of course we know that all things flow. 

But yet, as some other Greek.explains, 

The all is fasten'd with great chains, 

And neither you nor I can dream 

How this or that can slip from the Scheme : 

Why ask of the dusk what it does with the dawn. 

Or ask where the end of the circle has gone, 

Or where into what the wind blows? 

Yet this one questions of last year's snows, 

This other, because of a wither'd rose. 

Argues for me a blank to-morrow. 

And, in the very light of dawn. 

He bids me of his wine-cup borrow 

What he resents — oblivion! 

O great Omar ! I bow to you. 

And nod familiar to Villon, 

But I have neither hope nor fear 

O' being disperst in the atmosphere: 

Oblivion — I wish there were 

Such easy exit on the air. 

Beyond desire, beyond regret, 

58 



And clearly out of anywhere: 
To be, so far as we're concerned, 
An issue without sequence — nay 
Too much of Nature's game we've learn'd 
To credit that, I think, Omar ! 
Your rose has wither'd — well, that's clear; 
But of itself 'twas a passing phase, 
And may again on a day of the days 
From the undistinguish'd mass appear. 
As much itself as is itself 
Now in the light of your partial eye : 
And as for the snows of yester-year. 
Why, every flake of them still is here : 
No one of all has 'scaped from charge 
In sea or sky or whirling storm: 
So looking at it by and large 
It seems entirely a matter of form : 
There is no pit of nothingness 
Wherein what is can e'er be less, 
And we may say of everything 
It is itself continuing: 
The very shadows that we see 
Are fast involved ; 'tis a safe guess 
No thing has been, no thing can be, 
That is not now essentially ; 
And evermore we yet may hope 
Within our little nets to rope 
Some of that endless element 
Of mystery and beauty blent 
With the turning of God's kaleidoscope. 

59 




Ballade of Comfortable 
Doctrine 

we have come to life, it seems, 
And would escape the consequence ; 
And many men, with many schemes, 
Would tell us how and why and whence ; 

Good friends, I do you reverence. 
But weary of your subtleties : 

I only pray, when we go hence, 
God will put us all at ease. 
Maybe some Jack-o'-Lantern gleams 

Across the swamp of my offence ; 
Maybe too high my heart esteems 

God's ultimate benevolence; 

Of knowledge I make no pretence. 
My one religion's been to please, 

But this I hold in confidence : 
God will put us all at ease. 
By night more faith I have in dreams 

Than ever by day in common-sense ; 
And there's more of night than day meseems. 

And weird deeps beyond science 

To test our wee intelligence 
And little glow-worm theories : 

At night I think, for recompense, 
God will put us all at ease. 
Brother, I find some evidence. 

Despite our many miseries. 
That after life's last negligence 

God will put us all at ease. 
60 



Sljgm^a 0f a ^mnhn 



w 



Polity 



ITH good-will, and a touch of mirth, 

To clear and clean and plant and plan 
The common levels of the Earth : — 

What more should God then ask of Man? 



61 



Slfgm^js 0f a ISiannhn 



c 



liconomy 



HE fine contempt that Christ felt 
For his coat, and cash, and wherewithal. 
Is a virtue too occasional 
Methinks for our continuance ! 



i 



62 



Sll^m^fi of a Snutti^r 



Justice 




PARE him, you say ! So be it, then ! 
But I think it a maudlin kindliness. 
And fear some day for better men 
'Twill breed a villainous excess! 

'Tis easy enough to be merciful, 
But to be just is an excellence 
Beyond all flight of sentiment ! 



63 



Sllgm^B af a Snunb^r 



© 



Persistence 

HE pains of Life are all too many, 

And the Way is doubtful everywhere; 
But I have gone as far as any, 
And seen — and I do not despair ! 



64 



Ballade of the Easy Way 

eOD I think is a balancer, 
And runs the World by compromise : 
From brief observing I infer 
His line of least resistance lies 

Curving smoothly thro' the skies, 
Forever mixing night and day, 

With all that such a thing implies : 
Myself, I go the easy way. 
'Tis a good thing at times to fight : 

To give a blow, and take a blow. 
And hand it back with gathered might : 

'Tis the bully plan of the World below: 

And yet somehow as we older grow 
We're not so keen for every fray : 

We'd liefer miss than meet a foe : 
Myself, I go the easy v/ay. 
Troubles a-plenty we may not pass : 

Tangles too many we cannot untie : 
And there's a pitiful end for us all, alas! 

But we can slip round so much, if we try, 

Or stay things off till by and by 
We find they mostly are off to stay, 

Or matter no more at all : that's why 
Myself, I go the easy way. 
And the value of laughter, the value of tears, 

And the meaning of Life may be as it may: 
In the bitter-sweet wisdom of later years 

Myself, I go the easy way. 
65 



SIjgumB nf a Souni^r 



Aspiration 



UT give me the air! Always the air! 
The clean ways, and wings, wings, 
To reach beyond accepted things. 
And venture flights unendable! 



66 



iJljgm^s nf a H^nnnhtv 



G 



White Magic 

'ANDOR may be devilish, 

And truth untimely open Hell: 

Better pretend the thing you wish ; 

Anon you may, if you wish and wish. 
Achieve a miracle. 



Once an ugly truth I saw. 

And I hid it with a lie ; 
Cunning, for I knew the law, 
I cover'd it, and smother'd it, 

And kiird it with a lie : 
No man there was that knew of it, 

And many days went by. 

Lo, something fair hath risen like 

A lily from the sod ! 
And the lie is now the truth of it. 
Become the splendid truth of it, — 

Glory be to God! 



67 



Stigm^a nf u ^tmnhtv 



n 



Departure 



ET me from this World go free 
Before the last of me is spent! 
While yet some few fair girls lament. 
And some good fellows cherish me ! 



68 



m?H nf n Sounbpr 
Ballade of Faith 

X THINK between my cradle-bars 
Of a summer night there fell to me 
Some pale religion of the stars, 
While an old Moon lookt weirdly 
At me thro' an apple-tree 
And fixt my faith in a fair One 

Fading out of memory : 
But I would that I knew where my Lord is gone! 

Things there are by night I know 

That in the day I ne'er detect: 
Stars that shine from long ago 

Until bewilder'd I suspect 

The obvious World is not correct, 
And fear too much to lean upon 

The showings of mere intellect: 
But I would that I knew where my Lord is gonet 
In my own fashion I persist : 

No counsel of despair I brook: 
Neither for priest nor pessimist, 

Nor the jealous God nor his black Book: 

My early faith I've not forsook 
For the low things that pass anon: 

With eyes unspoil'd to the stars I look — 
But I would that I knew where my Lord is g^one! 

And caring less how the World esteems 

Me or my doing I go on 
With incommunicable dreams — 

But I would that I knew where my Lord is gone! 

69 




Good-Bye 

Villanelle 

LL things are reapt beneath the sky, 
And I'll be gone before the year: 
Girl, in October we say good-bye! 



Remember how the May was mere 
With white and green and violet ! 
Remember all that foUow'd, dear! 

How June, with wreath and coronet 

Of many roses amorous 
Led us dreaming deeper yet! 

Thro' red July victorious 

To August, ample, passionate! 
No lovers e'er had more than us. 

Now bronze September soon will set : 

I want no life extended drear 
Till Youth and Summer we forget. 

O Autumn, haunted, sweet and sere ! 

All things are reapt beneath the sky! 
And I'll be gone before the year : 

Girl, in October we say good-bye! 



70 



o 



Slfgmfa of a IS^nimhtt 
Ballade of Rags 

NCE to my fancy I was drest, 

Ready to challenge the ways of chance : 
Body and bone were of the best, 
And I rode away in the blue distance 

And ravisht Life in high joyance 
Of all her many beauties : Hey, 

How now with alter'd countenance 
I go in the rags of yesterday! 
Once I went largely at my ease, 

And humor'd myself with fine gusto ; 
Nor riches then, nor dignities 

I sought, but the rare scenario 

Where love is wrought to a rosy glow 
With clinging to forbidden clay: 

And I had it and had it and had it — so 
I go in the rags of yesterday! 
I have no heart for the poverty 

That comes to all — you understand: 
Yet with these relics left to me, 

This Jewell, this ribbon contraband. 

From my illicit vanisht land, 
I keep what fashion I may — but say 

Is there no future in my hand? 
I go in the rags of yesterday ! 
Oh tell me I'll travel sometime in style 

To a fair estate so far and away ! 
For I sing me a weary tune the while 

I go in the rags of yesterday ! 
71 



SIigm^B 0f a Inuni^r 



e 



To the Night 

Cantel; 

OOD luck to all who throng 
The ways of laughter and song ! 

But if for some they seem too brief— 
For some they seem too long. 



Myself I have been a great thief 
Of pleasure to lighten one grief, 

But now — say now do you fancy it wrong 
If I turn to the night for relief? 

Good luck to all who throng 
The ways of laughter and song ! 

But weary I turn to the night for relief— 
And I pray that the night be long. 



72 



X 



Ballade of Sleep 

VE lost my taste for things somehow 

That on a time were very sweet : 
Sin has no savor for me now, — 
I find no apples good to eat : 

You laugh, and say that I'm effete, 
But you are on the way, my friend. 

And after me you'll soon repeat: 
Sleep is the best thing in the end. 
Yet I come not with sour intent 

Against my old desires to prate: 
Truly I do not repent, 

I only wish I knew some great 

Exultant vice to stimulate 
What spark of Life remains to spend: 

But this I feel, as the hour grows late, 
Sleep is the best thing in the end. 
All things wear out, so much we see : 

All things must fall without reprieve: 
Yet spite of that invincibly 

Upon the brink I still believe 

That God has hidden up his sleeve 
For us some golden dividend : 

What think you then we shall receive? 
Sleep is the best thing in the end. 
Brother, down on a soundless bed 

From the ways of pain may we descend ! 
The stars creep dimly overhead: — 

Sleep is the best thing in the end. 
73 



Ballade of the Lost Castle 

ONCE upon a time there stood 
A Castle by the Western sea: 
Near by there was a gnomish wood 
Ancient and wild with glamorie 

Of f erly things wrought secretly : 
There I was free as it were mine, 

For those who ruled were kin to me: 
But the Lords o' the Castle are dead lang syne ! 
Oft in that wood from my old beldame 

I fled thro' husht elf -haunted ways : 
But the clatter there was when the gay Lords came 

Laughing back from their brave forays! 

Great sport they had, and high feast days, * 
FoUow'd by long red nights of wine. 

With ball and banquet rooms ablaze : 
But the Lords o' the Castle are dead lang syne ! 
A moment now to me it seem'd 

As if low golden bells had rung 
Out of the forest where I dream'd 

Years ago when I was young: 

And even now 'twas on my tongue 
To tell a tale too fair and fine 

For the like of these I dwell among : 
But the Lords o' the Castle are dead lang syne ! 
Slow accumulating hours ! 

And the last rays of the Sun shine 
Redly over the ruin'd towers ! 

But the Lords o' the Castle are dead lang syne ! 

74 



Stl^m^a 0f a Knmtif r 



With the Seven Sleepers 

Cantel 



o 



FAIRY, take me far 
To some enchanted star ! 

Let me go sleep for a thousand years 
Where the Seven Sleepers are ! 



Beyond the striving spheres, 
Beyond all hopes or fears. 

Where never a black or golden bar 
Of Hell or Heaven appears! 

O Fairy, take me far 
Away from things that are ! 

Let me go sleep for a thousand years 
In some enchanted star ! 



75 



© 



Ballade of Waiting 

HERE was a time that Death for me 

Unbalanced every new delight : 
Its cold abhorrent mystery 

Haunted me by day and night: 

I felt its noisome clammy blight 
Making of Life a mildew'd thing: 

But now to its face I cry: Alright! 
I'm no afraid for the outgoing! 
Because so many I loved have gone 

I stare a-wondering at the skies: 
The World below I look upon 

With listless, old, exhausted eyes: 

The while for every friend who dies 
I feel a queerish loosening 

Within of all familiar ties: 
I'm no afraid for the outgoing ! 
I weary under a weight of days, 

Withering and too sensible 
Of aged needs and alter'd ways : 

But this one thing is good to tell : 

In the wintry desert where I dwell 
Some rumor I have heard of Spring, 

And I have dream'd of asphodel: 
I'm no afraid for the outgoing! 
The sweet renewal of the air. 

And the call of Youth recovering,— 
Do these await me yet somewhere? 

I'm no afraid for the outgoing! 
76 



Sliam^fi of a Unmti^r 



The Isles of Gold 

Cantel 



BT 



AY from days too cold, 
Away from hearts too old, 

Honey-Mouth, O Honey-Mouth, 
I go to the Isles of Gold! 



Will it be to North or South 
That I find them, Honey-Mouth? 

The King no entry there I'm told 
Except to the dead alloweth! 

So be it, from days too cold! 
So be it, from hearts too old! 

Honey-Mouth, O Honey-Mouth, 
I go to the Isles of Gold ! 



77 



illj^m^a of a Souni^r 
Notes 

BALLADE OF THE PICAROON: — "He has 

much wrong resting on himself, and has crept through 
the worm-holes of all sorts of errors, in order to be able 
to reach many obscure souls on their secret paths. 
Forever dwelling in some kind of love, and some kind 
of selfishness and enjoyment. Powerful and at the 
same time obscure and resigned. Constantly loafing 
in the sunshine, and yet knowing the ladder which 
leads to the sublime to be near at hand." — Friedrich 
Nietzsche. 

VILLANELLE OF MUTTON :— Dam— A coin I 
am told of small value, used somewhere in the Orient, 
perhaps India, and there giving rise to a familiar 
phrase, as did the coin known as a "rap" in Ireland. 
This in explanation, lest the writer be thought profane. 

MIRELLE OF FOUND MONEY :— "Gerard de 
Nerval lived the transfigured inner life of the dreamer. 
*I am very tired of life!' he says. And like so many 
dreamers, who have all the luminous darkness of the 
universe in their brains, he found his most precious 
and uninterrupted solitude in the crowded and more 
sordid streets of great cities." — Arthur Symons. 

BALLADE OF FINE EATING:— In the matter of 
fine eating, and in maintaining it as something more 

78 



than the meat, the good Sir Thomas Browne thus 
commended Epicurus: "He (Epicurus) was contented 
with bread and water, and when he would dine with 
Jove, and pretend unto epulation, he desired no other 
addition than a piece of Cytheridian cheese." 

GOD'S KALEIDOSCOPE:— The doggerelle was 
anciently a form nearest to the impromptu chant; but 
nowadays it is seldom used to serious purpose. The 
doggerelle is not the pursuit of a tale, as some have 
supposed, but is an irregular versicle designed to catch 
elusive ideas. 

POLITY, ET AL. :— In a little workshop under my 
hat are some broken ballades and unused lines, from 
which I have hastily contrived these few quatrains, 
having now neither time nor inclination to do more 
with them. 



THE END. 



79 



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